Is Kuroda About to Deliver Bold Action?

Haruhiko Kuroda, the new Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor, holds his first press conference on Thursday, with media reports suggesting the central bank chief will use the opportunity to mark a major departure in monetary policy.

According to the Nikkei business daily, Kuroda is expected to announce a radical policy shift to achieve its 2 percent inflation target.

That was enough to send the benchmark Nikkei stock index to a four-and-a-half year high in early trade and keep the yen trading near recent three-and-a-half year lows around 96.70 per dollar.

The Japanese press leaked that Kuroda would pledge "bold monetary easing both in terms of quantity and quality" – news that even helped support U.S. shares in late Wednesday trade.

"What we know is that Kuroda is likely to promise a fair amount," said Sebastien Galy, senior currency strategist at Societe Generale in New York told CNBC Asia's "Squawk Box." "The BOJ doesn't need to do too much, just not disappoint markets."

Expectations for aggressive monetary easing in Japan have risen sharply since Shinzo Abe became Japanese prime minister in December and pledged to revive a stagnant economy and end years of deflation.

His radical economic policies, known as "Abenomics," involve the Bank of Japan pursuing aggressive monetary easing in order to reflate the economy.

Kuroda, who resigned from his post as president of the Asian Development Bank to become Japan's new central bank chief, has been an advocate of a more aggressive monetary policy.

Economists say that the policies Kuroda and his new team at the BOJ could pursue include buying long-dated government bonds compared with the current asset-purchase program that focuses on buying shorter-dated debt.

Although some analysts were skeptical that Kuroda would give away too much at his first news conference as BOJ governor.

"I think there are still intense negotiations going on behind closed doors, so I don't expect a full program to be unveiled today," Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney said on "Squawk Box."